The oft-prevailing attitude towards science from those working within anthroposophy or Waldorf education has at times fluctuated between self-suiting praise and open derision. In contrast, Steiner himself placed great importance on science and the scientific method, all-the-while alluding to limitations of imprisoning investigation in philosophical materialism and muddling percepts and concepts. After outlining four common prejudices against science (i.e., demonstration of the obvious,

more »

... with numbers, too reductionist, hypotheses represent bias), I then turn to discuss the science of statistics, which in recent years has taken on an increasingly esoteric, phenomenological form. Newer forms of science appear to have commonalities with Steiner's idea of four manifestations of being, which are subsequently outlined. Finally, parallels with and dangers upon this scientific, philosophy-of-freedom path are briefly alluded to. The perhaps controversial motivation for this paper is the observation that, despite Rudolf Steiner's thorough scientific grounding, including attempts to develop anthroposophy in a modern spirit of openness and methodological rigour, too little has been achieved precisely in this regard. Furthermore, it is often bemoaned in anthroposophical circles that "science" has ignored anthroposophy. Indeed, science is often criticised as being materialistic and closed to anthroposophical ideas. Despite this, certain scientific discoveries are often enthusiastically devoured and regurgitated by such anthroposophists, especially when these are thought to provide proof of supposedly anthroposophical ideas. The unfortunate consequence of such a superficial and self-selecting approach to science is that this bestows an increasingly unscientific and sectarian flavour on anthroposophy (e.g., see Pfeiffer, 1999, p. 160), thus constituting a departure from the carefully laid and hard-won experience-oriented epistemological foundation that Steiner sought to give anthroposophy (Steiner, 1918/1986; Steiner, 1996). In the current paper, I explore whether and how the scientific path in general, and more specifically statistical methods, could provide an avenue to conduct research that (a) satisfies the demands of modern scientific standards of objectivity and transparency, (b) handles and sorts observed symptoms in a surprisingly phenomenological way, and (c) provides an objective and empirical basis through its inherent reliance on mathematics for the existence of non-physical realities.